Method of searching for media objects

ABSTRACT

A method of searching for media objects is described, in which, in order to establish degrees of correspondence (UG) between a search request (SA) and selectable media objects, at least one feature (i 1 , d 1 , d 11 , d 12 ) of the search request is compared with at least one feature of the selectable media objects, in which the search request comprises at least one representation-describing feature (d 1 ), and in which a search result based on the degrees of correspondence (UG) is organized. In addition, a corresponding system of searching for media objects is described.

The invention relates to a method and a system of searching for mediaobjects.

The offering in respect of various electronic media types and formatshas been increasing extremely rapidly, especially just recently. Theretherefore exists an increasing need for suitable methods of enabling auser to search for media content within this increasing offering. Owingto the diversity of the offering and the various options for using mediacontent, a search for media objects in various environments may bedesired hereby. Examples of this would be a search for media objectsthat are stored locally, at home, on the user's personal computer orhome entertainment system, a search for media objects that are stored onInternet servers with worldwide distribution, or a search for mediaobjects stored on the server of an Internet shop for media objects.

The term “media object” hereby refers to any type of media content,especially text content, audio content and/or visual content, such asfilms, shows, news, radio dramas, music, pictures or personalizedInternet content. These media objects, preferably in digital form, mayhereby be available in stored form, be retrievable as “audio on demand”or “video on demand”, or be generated in real time as “live content”.The term “media object” hereby includes both whole, self-containedunits, such as whole films or whole news broadcasts, and parts of thesewhole units, such as film sequences or parts of news broadcasts.

A search method that is generally known consists of sending a searchrequest from a personal computer to an Internet search engine. A searchrequest of this kind could contain, for instance, the name of a musicgroup. The name of the music group is hereby a way of describing thecontent of the media object “piece of music” being sought. A differentway of describing the content of the media object “piece of music” beingsought would be, for instance, stating the title of a piece of music, apassage of text from the piece of music or the name of a relevant musicCD or record. The Internet search engine then compares the name of themusic group with names of music groups with which pieces of music areassociated, stored in a directory. The name of the music group that bestcorresponds with the name of the music group sought is then established.Finally, a search result is sent to the personal computer by theInternet search engine in the form of a list of pieces of musicassociated with this established music group.

However, this known way of searching, the core of which comprises acomparison of features of a search request describing the content of themedia object with stored features describing the content of theavailable media objects, proves to have considerable disadvantages inpractice. For instance, the search result frequently comprises mediaobjects which, although they are related in some way to thecontent-describing feature of the search request, do not accord with theuser's personality profile and/or what the user actually had in mind. Itis then left to the user to pick out from the large number of mediaobjects found the ones that correspond to his actual wishes andpreferences—for guitar-oriented rock music, for instance. This mayinvolve a high input in terms of cost and time.

If, for instance, a doctor is searching for scientific articlesconcerning lung diseases, and sends a related search request with thecontent-describing feature “lung disease” to an Internet search engine,he will receive as the search result an enormous number of articleswhich, although they exhibit in their content a certain correspondencewith the term “lung disease”, are not scientific articles, as actuallysought by the doctor. As the user, the doctor then laboriously has topick out the scientific articles from the large number of articlesfound, by looking at the articles individually. A logic “AND” operationof the content-describing feature “lung disease” with thecontent-describing feature “scientific” for use in a search requestgenerally does not confer any advantage, since scientific articles arenot generally identified with the headword “scientific”.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a methodof searching for media objects that enables the user to searchconveniently and reliably for media objects that correspond to hispersonality profile and/or his personal wishes.

This object is achieved by a method of the type specified above, inwhich, in order to establish degrees of correspondence between a searchrequest and selectable media objects, at least one feature of the searchrequest is compared with at least one feature of the selectable mediaobjects, wherein the search request comprises at least onerepresentation-describing feature, and in which a search result based onthe degrees of correspondence is organized.

The degree of correspondence between a search request and a media objectmay hereby depend, in particular, on the number of correspondingfeatures, the relevance of the corresponding features, the in particularuser-specific prioritization of the corresponding features and/or thedegree of correspondence of the features compared with one another.

The selectable media objects may hereby be stored centrally in adatabase or may be distributed in multiple databases. It is alsopossible for the media objects to be stored locally in a memory facilityat the user's location, or remotely in a memory facility connected tothe user via a communications connection. The individual steps of thesearch method may also be implemented by the user centrally, withdistribution, locally at the user's location or remotely.

The term representation-describing features, which may also be referredto as representation-specific attributes or perception features, herebyrelates to all features that describe the representation of a mediaobject. By means of representation-describing features of this kind, amedia object may be more accurately specified, by way of supplementationor as an alternative to the content description, so that the search maybe even better tailored to the user's wishes. Depending on the type ofmedia object, different representation-describing features arepossibilities hereby, some of which will be briefly explained below byway of example:

the representation of Internet sites may be described by, for instance,the number of pictures contained in the Internet site or by the type oflayout (clear and concise or full of information);

the representation of news of or a radio program may be described by,for instance, the type of voice of the speaker (male or female, high,low or sonorous);

the representation of recorded pieces of music may be described by, inparticular, the recording quality (hi-fi, tape noise, radio receivernoise or noise occasioned by the operation of the recording button);

the representation of documentary material may be described by the typeof language used (childish language or adult language);

the representation of films may advantageously be described by thefrequency of the cuts, contrast changes, color distribution, the speedof movement or of language, by expressions used or actions occurring(explosions, scenes of nudity or violence, pornography);

the representation of audio content may be described by the change involume used, the effects included (stereo or surround), the presence ofcertain language (processing) features, the rate of speech, thearticulation or the existence of delays;

the representation of pieces of music may be described by the musicgenre, the music style or the instruments used;

the representation of text objects may also be described by layoutcharacteristics, the style of language used or, in the case ofscientific texts for example, by the presence of bibliographicalreferences, of a separate summary or of an introductory piece on theauthor.

An organization of a search result may be implemented by, in particular,the selection of media objects with a particularly high degree ofcorrespondence and/or by the sorting of the media objects found as afunction of their degree of correspondence. In accordance with oneembodiment of the invention, these media objects, selected and/or sortedin this way, or the corresponding titles, may then be offered to a user,e.g. on a display device, for manual selection by the user.

It is therefore achieved by means of the invention that, in response toa search request, the user is offered as the search result, exclusivelyand/or preferably, those media objects that best correspond with hissearch request in terms of the requested representation-describingfeatures, and thereby best satisfy his personal wishes. Since the searchresult can be narrowed-down relatively significantly by the invention,the user's task in the possible subsequent manual selection of one ofthe media objects found is made easier.

Included under the invention are search requests that comprise theabovementioned or further representation-describing featuresindividually or in any combination, in particular explicitly. Especiallyin a search for multimedia media objects, a search for media objectsthat is even more closely tailored to the needs of the user may therebybe undertaken.

The dependent claims each contain especially advantageous embodimentsand further embodiments of the invention.

In order to match the search result even more closely to the user'srequirements without increasing the involvement of the user, it isproposed that a representation-describing feature be automaticallyresolved into representation-describing detailed features. So, forinstance, the representation-describing feature “suitable for children”may be resolved into the representation-describing detailed feature“action suitable for children”, “language suitable for children”,“acoustic representation suitable for children” and/or “visualrepresentation suitable for children”. Another embodiment provides forthese representation-describing detailed features themselves to be evenmore finely resolved. The representation-describing detailed feature“visual representation suitable for children” may then, for instance, befurther resolved into the features “large print”, “clear print”, “largepictures”, “color pictures”, “many pictures”, “more drawings thanphoto-realistic pictures”. This embodiment is hereby based on the ideaof finding the “lowest common denominator” between the search requestand selectable media objects, i.e. resolving representation-describingfeatures of selectable media objects and/or of a search request sofinely into detailed features that, when compared, the features are atthe same level of detailing.

The representation-describing features may be extracted from a userinput in accordance with a further embodiment of the invention. Thisincreases the convenience of the search and enables the user to beoffered a search result matched to his wishes. The user may herebyproceed in a way such as he is used to with conventional search engines.If, for instance, the user input, in particular the inputting of asearch request, is realized by a voice input exclusively, alternativelyor in addition to a keystroke input, features reflecting his personalityor his wishes as regards the representation of media objects to besought may be derived from the voice and/or language of the user. Forinstance, in the case of the inputting of a search request with achild's voice, the representation-describing feature “suitable forchildren” may be extracted and used as a component part of the searchrequest. The extraction of the representation-describing features mayhereby be realized at the user's location, in a central facility of acommunications network or at the location of the supplier of mediaobjects. Calculation operations may be saved if parameters that aredetermined in any event for the purpose of voice recognition in thecontext of speech input are used for extracting therepresentation-describing features from the voice and/or the language ofthe user.

Alternatively or in addition to the said extraction of features,provision may be made for a user profile to be stored in a user-profilememory facility, in which user profile representation-describingfeatures corresponding to the user's wishes are stored. Thisuser-profile memory facility may hereby be executed either centrally asa part of a communications network, locally in a subscriber station ofthe user or in a mobile memory device, such as a subscriberidentification module. When a search request is inputted, therepresentation-describing features may then be retrieved automaticallyfrom the user-profile memory facility and, if applicable, combined withother features of the search request. If, at the end of the searchprocedure, a user manually selects a media object from the searchresult, the representation-describing features that describe thisselected media object may be used as feedback information for updatingor optimizing the user profile. When further search requests are made,this again leads to the search result being further matched to theuser's wishes automatically, in particular in a manner invisible to theuser.

It is especially preferred if provision is made forrepresentation-describing features to be extracted from the mediaobjects so that they can then be compared with therepresentation-describing features of the search request. The extractionof these representation-describing features may hereby take place inadvance, for instance before or during the storage of the media objects.The media objects may then be stored with the representation-describingfeatures associated with them. This has the advantage that the analysiseffort for the extraction of the representation-describing features onlyoccurs once and the analysis result, i.e. the representation-describingfeatures, may be used over and over again for comparison with manydifferent search requests. The title of the media objects and theassociated representation-describing features may additionally be storedin a media-object directory remote from the media objects. As analternative or in addition to the storage of therepresentation-describing features, it is possible for therepresentation-describing features of the media objects to be newlyextracted for each search request. The memory requirement can be reducedas a result.

In addition to at least one representation-describing feature, thesearch request should preferably comprise at least onecontent-describing feature. The term content describing feature refersto features that describe the content of a media object, i.e. featuresthat generally form the search requests for conventional search engines.This mainly involves headwords that describe the title, author, composeror subject of a media object.

In order to compare the representation-describing and content-describingfeatures of a search request with the representation-describing andcontent-describing features of a large number of media objects, inparticular a one-step method and a two-step method fall within the scopeof the invention.

Under the one-step method, in a single step, therepresentation-describing and content-describing features of the searchrequest are compared with the features of a large number of selectablemedia objects, degrees of correspondence between the search request andmedia objects are determined therefrom and, on the basis of thesedegrees of correspondence, a search result is organized. The selectablemedia objects may be, in particular, all media objects available to theuser. The advantage of the one-step method lies, in particular, in thefact that little temporary memory is needed, and in the fact that anextremely good correspondence of the representation-describing featurescan cancel out a low correspondence of the content-describing features.

By contrast, under the two-step method, only content-describing featuresof the search request are initially compared with the features of alarge number of media objects in a first step, degrees of correspondencefor selection in respect of the content are determined therefrom betweenthe search request and media objects and, based on these degrees ofcorrespondence for selection, a large number of selectable media objectsis selected from media objects generally available to the user. Apredetermined number of media objects may hereby be selected thatexhibit the greatest degrees of correspondence for selection with thesearch request. As an alternative to this, selection may be made of themedia objects that exhibit a degree of correspondence with the searchrequest that exceeds a predetermined limiting degree of correspondencefor selection. These selected media objects now form the selectablemedia objects for a second step, in which features of the selectablemedia objects are compared with the representation-describing featuresof the search request, degrees of correspondence are determinedtherefrom and, on the basis of these degrees of correspondence, a searchresult is organized. The degrees of correspondence for selection asdetermined in the first step may also be incorporated into thisorganization of the search result. Since the comparison ofcontent-describing features with one another is generally less complexthan the comparison of representation-describing features with oneanother, the two-step method has the advantage that only pre-selectedmedia objects with a content that already complies with the user'swishes are allowed to be subject to the complex comparison withrepresentation-describing features.

A system of searching for media objects by the method in accordance withthe invention possesses a media interface for access to selectable mediaobjects, a request interface for receiving a search request from a user,a comparison device set up in such a way that, in order to determinedegrees of correspondence between the search request and selectablemedia objects, at least one feature of the search request is comparedwith at least one feature of the selectable media objects, wherein thesearch request comprises at least one representation-describing feature,and one organizational device set up in such a way that a search resultbased on the degrees of correspondence is organized.

This system may be implemented in practice either wholly or in part on acentral device of a communications network, at a user's home or at thelocation where media objects are stored. For instance, the mediainterface, the request interface, the comparison device and/or theorganizational device may be realized within a personal computer or auser's home entertainment system. In this event, the media interfaceenables, for instance, an access to locally stored media objects, andthe request interface is, for instance, set up to receive a searchrequest from an inputting device. Instead of, or in addition to this, itis possible, for example, for a media interface and/or a requestinterface to form the components of a search computer, which isconnected via the Internet to memory devices for media objects and to aninputting device located at the user's location. The comparison deviceand the organizational device may hereby form further components of thesearch computer. It is also possible for the media interface, therequest interface, the comparison device and/or the organizationaldevice to be localized at the location of the memory device, namely at acommercial supplier of media objects, and connected via the Internet toan inputting device for converting the user inputs into a searchrequest. Transmitted hereby via the media interface may be either themedia objects themselves and/or information concerning the mediaobjects, such as the titles of media objects, associated content andrepresentation-describing features and/or the memory address or Internetaddress of the media objects.

The system of searching for media objects may be further developed asclaimed in the claims relating to the method.

The invention will be further described with reference to examples ofembodiments shown in the drawings, to which, however, the invention isnot restricted.

FIG. 1 shows a simplified schematic diagram of the system architectureof a system of searching for media objects with media-object sources.

FIG. 2 shows a flowchart regarding the search for media objects.

FIGS. 1 and 2 each show, to the left of the left-hand broken linerepresenting the request interface AS, the user side NUT of the system,to the right of the right-hand broken line representing the mediainterface MS, the media-object sources MQ, and, between the two brokenlines, respectively, a search computer SR, which is the core of thesystem, and the method steps performed with the aid of the searchcomputer SR. Identical reference codes in the two Figures herebyindicate identical elements. In particular, only the most importantcomponents of the system's hardware configuration are shown in FIG. 1for the sake of clarity. It is obvious that this system is also equippedwith all other components that normally belong to search systems of thiskind, such as suitable connection leads, bus systems or routers.

The hardware configuration of the system SS will first be described withreference to FIG. 1, and then a search method and the associated methodsteps will be explained with reference to FIG. 2.

FIG. 1 shows, as a component of a system SS of searching for mediaobjects, a personal computer PC as the user's communications terminaland a search computer SR.

The personal computer PC comprises a keyboard and a microphone as theinputting device EE, and a graphics display and a loudspeaker as theoutputting device AE. The personal computer further comprises a memorydevice NP for storing a user profile, in particular for storing therepresentation-describing features preferred by the user. The personalcomputer PC is connected to the search computer SR via a requestinterface AS. The components of the personal computer and the methodsexecuted by the personal computer are controlled by a program-controlledprocessor device PEN, which may be equipped with further memoryelements.

The search computer SR, which may also be realized by a personalcomputer, comprises a comparison device VE and an organizational deviceOE, which are realized, wholly or at least in part, by aprogram-controlled processor device PES. In addition to the processordevice PES, the search computer comprises hard-disk and/or semiconductormemory elements SE for storing program software, intermediate searchresults and directories of media objects. The directories of mediaobjects hereby comprise the titles of media objects, content-describingand/or representation-describing features associated with the mediaobjects and Internet addresses of the associated media-object sources.The search computer SR is connected via a media interface MS to a largenumber of media sources MQ to which it has access, including readaccess, via the media interface MS.

The media-object sources MQ are realized by hard-disk memory devicesSPE1, SPE2, . . . SPEm, the content of which is organized by structuressimilar to databases, and by at least one recording studio AUS for theproduction of live radio drama programs. The hard-disk memory devicesSPE1, SPE2, . . . SPEm each comprise a large number of media objectsMO1, MO2, . . . MOn (shown as an example only for SPE1), which arestored with the inclusion of the associated representation-describingfeatures d1, the associated representation-describing detailed featuresd11, d12 and the associated content-describing features i1, i2 (shown asan example only for MO1).

Explained below with reference to FIG. 2 is a search method in which, asthe user, a child is searching the Internet for the media object “TheFairy Tale of Snow White”.

The child firstly enters the words “Snow White” using voice inputting ashis user input. A voice analysis device converts these spoken words intoa search request with the content-describing feature i1 “Snow White”. Inaddition, by means of an extraction of features, it is determined withthe voice analysis device that the user input is a child's voice, andthe representation-describing feature d1 “suitable for children” is thusextracted. This feature “suitable for children” is resolved inter aliainto the detailed feature d12 “action suitable for children” byresolution into representation-describing detailed features. Inaddition, the detailed feature d11 “woman's voice as narrator” is readfrom the child's user profile, because it has proved in the past thatthe child prefers to have fairy tales read by a woman's voice. A searchrequest SA comprising the features “Snow White”, “suitable forchildren”, “action suitable for children” and “woman's voice asnarrator” is then sent to a search computer SR over the Internet as therequest interface AS.

Initially, in a first step, the available media objects, listed in amulti-object directory, and in particular the content-describingfeatures associated with them, are compared by the search computer SRwith the content-describing feature i1 “Snow White” of the searchrequest, and degrees of correspondence for selection AUG between thesearch request and the available media objects are determined therefrom.The media-object directory hereby represents a kind of contents list ofthe media-object sources without containing the media objectsthemselves. The media objects with the twenty largest degrees ofcorrespondence are sent as selectable media objects to a second step inthe course of a preselection.

In the second step, the selectable media objects, and in particular therepresentation-describing features associated with them, are comparedwith the representation-describing (detailed) features “suitable forchildren”, “action suitable for children”, and “woman's voice asnarrator” of the search request, and degrees of correspondence UGbetween the search request and the selectable media objects aredetermined therefrom. As a function of the degrees of correspondencethereby determined, the selectable media objects are then sorted and thesearch result organized in this way is transmitted via the Internet tothe child's personal computer. Via an output device, the child isinitially shown a sorted list with the titles of the twenty mediaobjects, each with a brief further description, or offered it to trywith a brief media excerpt. The child can then, as part of a userselection, manually select the media object that best accords with hiswishes. This media object can then be downloaded in further steps, whichare not shown in the Figure, from the relevant media-object source viathe Internet to the personal computer, and output there. If the childultimately manually selects a fairy tale spoken in a man's voice, theuser profile will be updated, in the course of a user-profile updatingprocedure, to the effect that the representation-describing detailedfeature “woman's voice as narrator” is replaced by the detailed feature“man's voice as narrator” or deleted, or downgraded in priority.

From time to time, the media-object directory is updated in the searchcomputer to the effect that the available media-object sources areinterrogated as to their content or their offering, and correspondingentries in the media-object directory are corrected or supplemented. Tothis end, depending on the embodiment, the media-object titles in themedia-object directory either have assigned to them thecontent-describing or representation-describing features that arealready assigned to the corresponding media objects in the media-objectsources, or these content-describing or representation-describingfeatures are extracted from the media objects and only then assigned tothe corresponding media-object titles in the media-object directory.

In conclusion, it is again pointed out that the systems and methodsillustrated in the Figures and the descriptions are merely embodimentexamples, which may be varied to a large degree by a person skilled inthe field without exceeding the bounds of the invention. For instance,in the above-described embodiment examples, the request interface andthe media interface were realized, in particular, by an Internetconnection. These interfaces may, however, also be based on othercommunications protocols or on standardized or proprietary data busprotocols. The media-object sources may also be components of the searchcomputer. It is further possible for the media objects to be transferredto the user indirectly via the search computer from the media-objectsources, rather than directly via the Internet, as a result of whichbilling and digital rights management systems may be superimposed on thesearch method. It is also possible for the personal computer and thesearch computer to be executed together as a computing unit. For thesake of completeness, it is also pointed out that the use of theindefinite article “a” does not exclude the possibility that thefeatures in question may also be present more than once, and that theuse of the term “comprehensive” does not preclude the existence offurther elements or steps.

1. A method of searching for media objects in which, in order toestablish degrees of correspondence (UG) between a search request (SA)and selectable media objects, at least one feature (i1, d1, d11, d12) ofthe search request (SA) is compared with at least one feature of theselectable media objects, in which the search request comprises at leastone representation-describing feature (d1) and in which a search resultbased on the degrees of correspondence (UG) is organized.
 2. A method asclaimed in claim 1, characterized in that the search result is sorted onthe basis of the degrees of correspondence (UG).
 3. A method as claimedin claim 1, characterized in that, in order to establish the degrees ofcorrespondence, at least one representation-describing feature (d1) isresolved into representation-describing detailed features (d11, d12). 4.A method as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that at least onerepresentation-describing feature (d1) of the search request isextracted from a user input.
 5. A method as claimed in claim 4,characterized in that, with the use of an acoustic inputting device, atleast one representation-describing feature (d1) of the search requestis extracted from the user input by means of voice analysis.
 6. A methodas claimed in claim 1, characterized in that at least onerepresentation-describing feature (d1) is explicitly described by theuser input.
 7. A method as claimed in claim 1, characterized in thatrepresentation-describing features (d1) are extracted from at least someof the selectable media objects.
 8. A method as claimed in claim 1,characterized in that at least some of the selectable media objects arestored, with associated representation-describing features (d1) in amemory facility (SPE1, SPE2, . . . SPEm).
 9. A method as claimed inclaim 1, characterized in that the search request (SA) comprises atleast one content-describing feature (i1, i2).
 10. A method as claimedin claim 9, characterized in that initially, in order to determinedegrees of correspondence for selection (AUG) between a search request(SA) and the available media objects (MO1, MO2 . . . MOn), at least onecontent-describing feature (i1, i2) of the search request (SA) iscompared with at least one feature of the available media objects (MO1,M02, . . . MOn), and that the selectable media objects are selected fromthe available media objects as a function of the degrees ofcorrespondence for selection (AUG).
 11. A system (SS) of searching formedia objects, with a media interface (MS) for access to selectablemedia objects, a request interface (AS) for receiving a search requestfrom a user, a comparison device (VE) set up in such a way that, inorder to determine degrees of correspondence (UG) between the searchrequest (SA) and selectable media objects, at least one feature of thesearch request is compared with at least one feature of the selectablemedia objects, wherein the search request (SA) comprises at least onerepresentation-describing feature, and an organizational device (OE) setup in such a way that a search result based on the degrees ofcorrespondence is organized.
 12. A system (SS) as claimed in claim 11with an inputting device (EE) for converting a user input into a searchrequest comprising at least one representation-describing feature.